Yes, so true. In order to minimize violence towards animals, everyone must become vegan (not just people of a certain political / culture persuasion). That means that even assh*oles must become vegan - the sometimes-misogynist Vegan Gains serves to recruit such people, and I am thankful that he does.

In achieving popularity, a movement must be careful to focus on useful goals, ethical methods, and an adherence to rational, evidence-based thinking.

As far as Christianity is concerned I recognize that everyone was not a passive martyr. Never stated otherwise. Jesus who is the center of my faith was not passive he was very active. Being a Christian is a very active thing. It is not passive by any leap of the imagination. I agree PETA has done and does a lot for the movement as it were. Yes there are separate gifts out there that we all have and should use. None of which is a militant style us or them tactic. In the long run you are not going to keep lasting change that way.

Well clearly I am an outsider here, as I believe that animal liberation comes first, and that all other aspects are secondary to it. I actually take some amount of offense to the environmental argument, as it seems (to me) like someone is saying "Oh my gosh! All of the dead bodies in ____ are poisoning the water table! How horrible!!". I think most of us (Or maybe just me) would say, "Ahem. Did you not hear me say GENOCIDE?"

Similarly I find the health argument A) not reallybased in fact and B) offensive. And even if it WAS based in fact, and even if there WERE studies to prove that it was based in fact, do you really think people would stop? My answer is no, and smoking comes to mind. And unlike smoking, almost EVERYBODY eats animal products. In addition wouldn't you be shocked if someone told you (and was serious) Not to rape because of the dangers of catching an STD? Yes you might catch an STD from raping someone, but isn't it more important to note that... well... rape is unethical plain and simple?


I SUPPOSE human starvation would be a viable argument but I find the "Think of the children" argument to be somewhat feeble. NOT eating meat is not going to change the fact that kids are starving, not because there's no food, but because of systematic political repression and economic inequality, apart from the fact that it is an obvious usage of emotion, not reason.

I mean, if you want to try to convince people to stop killing animals by informing them (Not too militantly!!) that it is bad for their health, bad for the environment, and bad for third-world children than be my guest. But let me tell you, back when I was eating meat I used to say "Well I will die happy", "Your a** is bad for the environment" and "I don't care" as my arguments. My arguments weren't logical, but the already existing vegans didn't make me vegan either. And even if they did work on someone (Who's logical side, I would assume, would be rather squishy), their veganism would be very fleeting at best.


Also, quite a bit of us have forgotten the fact that meat-clinginess is VERY real indeed. Even if veganism made people IMMORTAL, I wouldn't be surprised if only a few people became vegan. PEOPLE DO NOT CARE, and if they did, we would have a pristine environment, healthy, long lifespans, liberated animals, zero poverty, and many more wonderful things.

But is it that people don't care, or perhaps that we need to TEACH them to care?

Well, the trick to make people become vegan (And the trick to getting people to favor the rights of any group) is to highlight the INCONSISTENCY between the way they treat others and the way they want to be treated themselves. The process is very long and very difficult, but if you tailor it for each person you try to convince, it will work better.

But how do you convert en masse? Peaceful resistance. It's tried, and it works.

in my experience the most successful, time-tested ideologies focus on how happy, successful, content, at peace, optimistic, and loving it's people are. They point to the brightest future imaginable.

You might be able to gin up a following of angry acolytes for a while, but most people don't really want to strive for misery, failure, discord, pessimism, and hate. There's no future in it.

it's similar to other crusades that have a strong emotional side. i've found younger people/newer to veganism folks to be much more inflammatory and all encompassing in their views. I've now become more of an abolitionist than ever before, BUT i don't use inflammatory talk so much as facts and reasoning to sell my points.

This debate will never end. It's the same debate that happens in any movement or great cause. There are always the ones who want to push the status quo but never too much because it could cause problems. And the radicals that want to push the limits and want change yesterday. If you think about it this still happens today in the civil rights and lgbt rights struggles. Both sides need each other to achieve what they want. It's a symbiotic relationship. The conservatives get to point to the radicals and say see we aren't as radical and crazy as them. If you don't want to deal with them you are going to have to deal with us. The radicals get the satisfaction of knowing that at least some of their ideas are going to be used even if they aren't going to be the ones to get the credit. If enough people get scared or moved emotionally in some way changes will be made.

I never hold meat eating against a person. Whether or not I respect that person has more to do with how they live their overall lives, and of course, how they treat me :-). Eating meat has been a cultural norm in almost every society on earth, since pretty much forever. Whatever you're born into is your normal, and it usually takes a lot of dynamite to separate your own self from that sense of normal. And there's not enough dynamite in the world for one person to separate another from their normal without that person's active cooperation.

You can try to be helpful and informative if someone seems to be questioning their norms and open to changing, but you can't open someone up to it just through your own efforts. And by "you can't" I don't mean that nobody can, or that you never can, only that in any given instance it tends to help just not being a jerk.

A friend recently inherited a full-length mink coat. She was soliciting opinions on FaceBook about whether we thought she should wear it or do something else with it, and clearly wanted everyone to tell her they were OK with it. She didn't just want to wear it, she wanted to wear it without "feeling awkward," wanted everybody she knew to encourage her to wear it, while also wanting to come across as a loving person who is kindly disposed toward animals. "It's what mom would have wanted, I miss her dreadfully and the coat smells like her." Oh, and she had spinal surgery within the past year, and in the cold the metal in her back gets very uncomfortable. Though of course I'm pretty sure she's talking about the distance between her front door and the car, or between the car and a restaurant.

So I blundered into that mess with all my opinions, me on one side and nearly everyone else telling her "Ah, go ahead and wear it. They've been dead forever anyway." I'm pretty sure we're not friends anymore, which is a sadness, and not only because we have many real world friends in common. I don't think I was hectoring, I don't think I was being supercilious, I don't think I was being mean. But I might have actually come across as all three, which is pretty much the same thing as being all three.

I was pretty much the only one saying the things I was saying, and it was quite the alienating experience. My only consolation is that when she hears what I was saying from somebody else, she won't be hearing it for the first time. I'm all for vegans not being alienating with their passion, but I totally sympathize that in the moment, saying what you feel will seem to matter a whole lot more than how it's probably going to go over. At least when someone has actually asked the question.

Good post Joan.

Leedsveg.

I am only a year in to my journey as a vegetarian (going vegan) and have seen this sort of attitude, not so much from other vegans (partially because I live in small town MS, USA, and there are not many of us), but from omnivores because a lot of vegans have a bad reputation for being overbearing and rude about their lifestyles. People inquire about my diet change constantly, and through my journey and excitement, my best friend and a coworker have both begun the process of changing to a vegetarian lifestyle. I firmly believe it is the obligation of every intellectual to choose their path based on not only taking the higher moral road, but by living and being the example of it also, and this includes being respectful of omnivores as well as protecting the lives of animals. Someone that can be rude to someone based on the food he/she eats has only made the diet change, not the lifestyle change.

I have heard of people taking old coats and having them made into stuffed bears. There was a service that did that at one point or another. Gross, I know. That way no one has to know that you kept your coat. She wanted someone to tell her what she wanted to do was ok. At least some one told her the truth.

If you find the environmental argument "offensive" you apparently don't understand it. It's not just "all the dead bodies in the water table"...it's like holy ****, we're all going to die, animals are becoming extinct by the second, and we really don't have time for these ridiculous luxuries like "oh but I like the taste of meat"...you seem unclear on the fact that the world is ending, this includes huge numbers of non-human animals, as well as the possibility of the human race being extinct in a century.

That's the environmental argument, in the roughest and most abrupt way I can say it. Your little claims about genocide are on a much broader scale than you apparently understand.

You know who I actually think does the most damage to veganism? Freely the Banana girl and her ilk.

People who make veganism look like a fad or an eating disorder.

People who systemically encourage diets - usually raw, mono food, or both - that leave people hungry, malnourished or sick, may create people who now have a life long irrational hatred of veganism through personal trauma with fruitarianism.

I have an acquaintance like this, one of the victims, she drives me nuts because she tried some dumb juice fast and ate mostly raw fruit - now she's turned into some anti-organic, anti-vegan, anti-Pinterist, pro-vax, natural health mocking nazi, who seems more at home with 70 year old white men who own cattle companies than a free thinking person who once tried raw veganism. It's because it made her sick.

Those people - those who make veganism look like an eating disorder for loony people - do much more harm than militants.

All the vegans I know in real life are polite and respectful and get along fine with omnivores. It is only on FB and message boards that I encounter the other type of vegan. In my experience, this distinction between how people act in real life and how they act on social media, also applies to religion, politics, etc.